1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of digital delay systems for digital pulse signals, and in particular, to digital delay systems for very closely spaced pulses.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital signal processing often requires the transmission of closely spaced digital pulses. Digital signal processing also frequently requires that signals having such closely spaced pulses must be delayed. The delay of closely spaced digital pulses by conventional digital delay circuits is unsatisfactory, because active delay circuits have dead times, during which such circuits cannot respond to a following pulse until a preceding pulse has been propagated through the delay circuit. As digital circuits run at faster and faster clock rates, the time interval between the pulses of a signal which must be delayed become shorter than the dead time of the active delay circuit. No matter how fast the response time of the active delay circuit becomes, and how short the dead time becomes, it can be expected that the interval between pulses to be delayed will be shorter than the dead time. An altogether new approach is required.